BlBLIOPHILY 
 
 OR 
 BOOKLOVE
 
 BIBLIOPHILY 
 
 OR 
 
 BOOKLOVE 
 
 F--- --J 
 
 BY 
 JAMES F. WILLIS 
 
 BOSTON AND NBW YORK 
 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN CO 
 
 MDCCCCXXI
 
 COPYRIGHT, 19*1, BY JAMES F. WILLIS 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
 
 TO 
 
 S. R. C. 
 
 AND 
 
 C. A. L. 
 
 LOYAL AND STEADFAST 
 
 2040702
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 I. BOOKLOVE 1 
 
 II. BOOKS 9 
 
 III. GREAT BOOKS 20 
 
 IV. BOOK-GATHERING 29 
 V. BOOK-READING 46 
 
 VI. BOOK-MAKING 68
 
 BIBLIOPHILY 
 
 i 
 
 BOOKLOVE 
 
 IT is booklove that enables us to perceive 
 whatever is true and beautiful in books, and 
 it is a passport to the purest and the perfect- 
 est pleasures possible to men. We are never 
 really well-bred until we have attained abil- 
 ity to know and to love real books : it is al- 
 most all a matter of education of self- 
 education; and the completer the culture, 
 the deeper-rooted the appreciation and the 
 greater the influence. Booklove is a mark 
 of refinement, and we are only fractions 
 of men without it. Frederic Faber says, 
 "Booklove has broadened many a narrow 
 soul; many a close, stifled, unwindowed 
 heart has it filled with mountain-air and sun- 
 shine, thus making room for God and man 
 where there was no room before." Next to
 
 2 BlBLIOPHILY, OR BoOKLOVE 
 
 the poet, the booklover is the richest and the 
 happiest of men, however humble his sta- 
 tion may be: it keeps him from vulgar com- 
 pany and pastimes, and is the most effica- 
 cious means for attaining all the amenities 
 of culture. We marvel at the breeding and 
 the scholarship of the men of three centuries 
 ago, and at the dignity of their expression; 
 but it is all mainly attributable to their book- 
 love: they did not keep the company of so 
 many books as we ; but they kept better com- 
 pany, understood them better, and loved 
 them as friends: their manners were courtly, 
 and there is dignity in both their diction and 
 their phrasing because "they lunched with 
 Plutarch and supped with Plato." By their 
 very occupation, book lovers as well as book- 
 sellersare r0W-minded : their constant com- 
 panionship with books gives them a liber- 
 ality through which they view clearly and 
 dispassionately every phase of life and every 
 dispensation of Providence; they are not 
 always what the world knows as practical,
 
 BOOKLOVE 3 
 
 for spiritual development seldom produces 
 dexterity in the baser organs. While book- 
 love is not a common trait and lack of it is 
 common even among collegians, there is no 
 greater drawback for J0w/-education than to 
 be born deaf to the persuasive influences of 
 worthy books. Nootherfriendshipcan quite 
 equal that of the books through which our 
 spiritual nature and our character have been 
 advanced: Cicero preferred to part with 
 all he owned rather than not be permitted 
 to live and die among his books: Bishop 
 Fenelon said that not for an empire would 
 he part with his books or his booklove: that 
 master-historian Gibbon said that booklove 
 meant more to him than all the riches of The 
 Indies: Macaulay preferred to be a beggar 
 with a love for books than to be a million- 
 aire without them : when Scott returned to 
 Abbotsford to die and was wheeled into his 
 library, he burst into tears as he beheld those 
 lifelong friends upon his bookshelves: when 
 Southey's intellect failed and he was no
 
 4 BlBLIOPHILY, OR BoOKLOVE 
 
 longer able to read, he would walk about his 
 bookshelves gently stroking or caressing 
 those friends of his happier days. 
 
 Booklove supplies each day and each hour 
 with an endless stream of independent and 
 rational pleasure, and we need not hope for 
 anything really worthy of a Christian or an 
 American from the man who does not at 
 times love to stay in his own room in the en- 
 nobling company of the great men who live 
 in books. We all are made or marred by the 
 company we keep, whether of men or of 
 books. No darkness from without can ever 
 obscure the light and the sweetness within, 
 which is forever the portion of the man who 
 loves books. Washington Irving says that 
 it is only the booklover who knowshow dear 
 these si lent yet eloquent companions of pure 
 thoughts and innocent hours become in the 
 time of adversity when worldly things 
 grow drossy, when friends grow cold and 
 intimates become vapidly civil and com- 
 monplace. Next to the glory of writing a
 
 BOOKLOVE 5 
 
 worthy book is a taste for the dainties among 
 books, a discernment in appreciating good 
 books, and a hunger for collecting them. It 
 is the caprice of vulgarians to sneer at him 
 who inclines toward making books the chief 
 of hisfriends, to surround himselfwith them, 
 and to live happy in their midst: perhaps it 
 is because they feel that his choice is a re- 
 flection upon their cheaper tastes that they 
 square themselves by dubbing him biblio- 
 mane book-mad; Ruskin observes that 
 they do not call the vulgarian house-buyer 
 or horse-buyer house-mud, or borse-mad. 
 
 It is by being in the presence of books 
 from childhood that a love for them is un- 
 consciously acquired; and, in a child's evo- 
 lution, the library is a far more important 
 place than the nursery: whoever is not a 
 booklover before he reaches manhood shall 
 hardly attain it afterward disuse atrophies 
 this power. Dr. Holmessays that all menare 
 afraid of books who have not tumbled about 
 among them from infancy; they may not
 
 6 BlBLIOPHILY, OR BoOKLOVE 
 
 read the greatest among them While growing 
 to man's stature, but virtue passes through 
 their parchment and leather garments when- 
 ever they touch them, as the precious drug 
 sweated through the handle of the bat in the 
 Arabian story: such men are always at home 
 wherever they smell the invigorating fra- 
 grance of Russia or Morocco; and few that 
 are otherwise built ever seem at home in a 
 library the beginning of booklove is of- 
 tener an endowment than an acquirement. 
 To become entirely worthy of our Amer- 
 ican manhood, we must live among books 
 and live lovingly among them: the soul of 
 man has nowhere else so stamped his image 
 as in this world of books; and, to be fair of 
 head and heart, we must find a home within 
 thisworld. The wants that books supplycan 
 be known only by living lovingly among 
 them, and he always reverences them who 
 thus lives among them. Every advancing 
 soul quickly perceives the heritage he has in 
 books; he is always most at ease in their
 
 BOOKLOVE 7 
 
 company, and always prepared to forego any 
 other pleasure that he may dip into all the 
 truth and the beauty that is held between the 
 covers of some true book : it isonly the sleepy 
 or the dead soul that finds books a barren 
 wilderness. The man who in these days has 
 found no book to love ishardly worth know- 
 ing; he has no message for us that can in any 
 way advance our character-side or incline us 
 toward the noble things of life; in the things- 
 of-the-soul, he has not risen above the peas- 
 ant prior to Gutenberg so, what 's the use ? ! 
 The/>Az/-people are the pillars of every 
 democracy: what they are decides the strength 
 or the weakness of our nation; and nothing 
 can conduce more to their being somebody 
 and to their doing something, than to help 
 them early to become acquainted with the 
 goodznd the better and the best among books, 
 to inspire them to make books their steadfast 
 friends and lifelong companions, and to es- 
 tablish in them the conviction that even 
 illiteracy is preferable to bad, worse, worst
 
 8 BlBLIOPHILY, OR BoOKLOVE 
 
 books. Next to inculcating patriotism and 
 the spirit of our America, American teachers 
 have no other task nearly so important as to 
 create an understandings/* and an apprecia- 
 tion/or the books-that-fljv-books. Without 
 booklove, any teacher is a menace to pupils 
 if he has not read, he never can infuse the 
 spirit of r//-reading.
 
 II 
 
 BOOKS 
 
 HE is the blessed man who lives a hidden and 
 workful life, nourished by the love of one or 
 two really worthy women and by the friend- 
 ship of one or two real men, devoted to the 
 practice of goodness, and to the search for 
 the truth and the beauty of life through 
 books: above all other things in the world, 
 his books shall help him to discover what he 
 is, whither he is going, how he is related to 
 the world and his fellows. 
 
 The supreme aim of books is to help us to 
 make the most of life, and men of vision use 
 them mainly for this end. They are not a lux- 
 ury, but an essential of life : what food is to 
 the body, books are to the soul; and it is im- 
 possible to overrate them. Not all men have 
 the j0#/-qualities to get the most out of 
 books; but, for all that have adequately cul- 
 tured soul-powers, it is among the chief of
 
 1O BlBLIOPHILY, OR BoOKLOVE 
 
 their patriotic and religious duties to know 
 them to know them is to love them, and 
 those who love both live right and do right. 
 Towards making God's world a happier 
 world, the printing-press has preceded plat- 
 form and pulpit. Through the invention of 
 printing, the poorest man may to-day own 
 the richest books; and they are the Alad- 
 din's Lamp that can turn his humble home 
 into a prince's palace. The modern world is 
 not spiritually superior to the ancient; but 
 it is superior from its spiritual powers plus 
 its heritage of two thousand years transmit- 
 ted to it through books, which it never could 
 have had but for the beneficent invention of 
 printing: so, we can never think of Guten- 
 berg without the utmost reverence and grat- 
 itude for his masterly invention. 
 
 How a man appreciates books is a test of 
 his capacity for higher conduct and higher 
 life. The noble books shall dignify us; the 
 /gnoble shall debauch us: whether they shall 
 dignify or debauch depends upon our he-
 
 BOOKS 11 
 
 redity and environment and education 
 especially upon our education. True books 
 are as difficult to find as true men; bad and 
 vulgar books are as obtrusive and as ubiq- 
 uitous as bad and vulgar men. It is only an 
 alert soul that can truly understand books- 
 that-^rd'-books, and become jo#/-enriched 
 through them; it is only when our breeding 
 both natural and ideal has enabled us to un- 
 derstand the language and the indispensable 
 uses of books that we begin to grow in a big 
 manly way. Mrs. Browning says, "Earth is 
 crammed with heaven, and every common 
 bush is afire with God ; but only he who sees 
 takes off his shoes." For light to perceive all 
 this God and heaven in our midst and to 
 profit from it, we must turn mainly to the 
 books that thrill with light and power. 
 
 The man who does not keep book-com- 
 pany and does not keep improvinghisbook- 
 surroundings rarely yearns for intellectual 
 and moral surroundings. To expect the vul- 
 gar to value the best in life and in books is
 
 12 BlBLIOPHILY, OR BoOKLOVE 
 
 to expect what never has been : vulgarians 
 are vulgar just because they are contented 
 merely with what excites curiosity and af- 
 fords amusement, or with what pleases one or 
 anotheroftheir sensualities. Like everything 
 else that is worth having, book-appreciation 
 is a matter of education; and, for our high- 
 est interests, both college and church shall 
 never be betteremployed than in inculcating 
 the importance of keeping the company of 
 real books and of improving book-surround- 
 ings. Our choice of books is always a test of 
 our manhood and of ourculture. A bad book 
 corrupts even more easily and quickly than 
 a bad man, for we will often listen to a bad 
 book when we would spurn the talk of a bad 
 man. Bad books are dangerous because the 
 soul generally shrinks to the meaner compa- 
 ny that gathers there to hatch conspiracies 
 against our better-self: in all companion- 
 ships, the lower tends to draw the higher 
 down we get courage and strength and 
 gladness from looking #/>, seldom from look-
 
 BOOKS 13 
 
 ing down. Whenever we are interested in an 
 inferior book, our soul lives in an alley. The 
 good book is a thing-of-beauty, and a thing- 
 of-beauty is a thing-of-God: it inspires hope 
 and courage, it leads to lofty simplicity and 
 robust virtues, it refreshes and nourishes our 
 soul by feeding it upon dainty and whole- 
 some soul-food which is more abundant in a 
 worthy book than anywhere else. The good 
 book sustains us to endure life, and to get 
 the best out of life ; it breaks for us the poor 
 hobble of everyday sights and sounds and 
 habits and tasks which tether both our think- 
 ingand ourfeeling. Every other but a worthy 
 book does something to unman us; all that 
 a man should ever care for a book is just 
 what it is worth to him. Trash shall not be 
 produced when trash does not sell; and this 
 shall come when literature shall be given its 
 proper place in school, not only for soul- 
 development, but also as a most easily- 
 opened door to history and art and science 
 and morals.
 
 14 BlBLIOPHILY, OR BoOKLOVE 
 
 The books-that-rfr<?-books!! There is lit- 
 tle gold in the book-mine to-day: it consists 
 mainly of clay and stones! We, too, may 
 complain with Charles Lamb that it moves 
 our spleen to see things in books' clothing 
 perched upon shelves like false saints, thrust- 
 ing out the legitimate occupants usurpers 
 of true shrines, intruders into the sanctuary: 
 to reach up hoping to find some Steele or 
 some kind-hearted play-book, and come bolt 
 upon some Adam Smith or some well-ar- 
 ranged assortment of blockheaded cyclo- 
 paedias set forth in an array of Russia or 
 Morocco, when a tithe of that good leather 
 could comfortably clothe our shivering 
 book-friends who have worn their raiment 
 threadbare through devoted service to us. 
 " I never see these impostors," says Lamb, 
 "but I long to strip them and to clothe my 
 ragged veterans in their spoils." Lowell says 
 that in books we must not (like the sailors 
 of Ulysses) take bags of wind for sacks of 
 gold; or our little lifeboat shall soon be
 
 BOOKS 15 
 
 driven far from our proper port by these 
 winds, as was the unfortunate Ulysses. 
 
 It is the belief to-day that general spiritual 
 culture far excels mere intellectual culture. 
 Greek and Latin have always been service- 
 able for purposes of intellectual gymnastics; 
 but, for general spiritual culture, modern lit- 
 erature surpasses both, and to-day not even 
 the moderately wise think of burying them- 
 selves in a Greek or Latin urn, as did the 
 scholars of The Renascence. English is the 
 oldest and the ripest of all the modern liter- 
 atures; and, along with The French, it has 
 sustained a higher average of excellence fora 
 longer time than other modern literatures, 
 and has put into modern and Christian form 
 the best that ancient and pagan literature 
 ever had: whoever masters English literature 
 unconsciously receives into his culture the 
 substantial literary life of Palestine, Greece, 
 and Rome. French books seem to have been 
 written just for Paris; but we who speak the 
 tongue of Shakespeare are heirs to a litera-
 
 l6 BlBLIOPHILY, OR BoOKLOVE 
 
 ture that has circled the earth with its music 
 and messages it seems to have been writ- 
 ten for all the world. Greek was admirably 
 adapted for literary purposes; but English 
 is not one whit behind Greek for such pur- 
 poses, even if it does lack economy and self- 
 control. We shall be coming into our own 
 when chief among American school-books 
 shall be The Bible, Shakespeare and Ten- 
 nyson, Scott and Fenimore-Cooper, Motley 
 and Parkman, Emerson and Lowell. The 
 Bible concerns itself with life, and literature 
 is permeated with illustrations from it and 
 allusions to it; without familiarity with 
 The Bible, modern books are almost incom- 
 prehensible. In Shakespeare and Tennyson 
 can be found all the materials for deep and 
 genuine culture; and it is essential to know 
 them for their poetic qualities and tender 
 sentiments, and for their delightful diction 
 and phrasing : it has been said that no mod- 
 ern life can be full unless a myriad of days 
 and nights have been given to Shakespeare
 
 BOOKS 17 
 
 he is "our most rhythmic genius, our 
 acutest intellect, our profoundest imagina- 
 tion, our healthiest understanding, who ar- 
 rived at the full development of hispowers at 
 the moment when the material in which he 
 worked (that wonderful composite, called 
 English) was in its freshest perfection." 
 Worthy stories give imaginative pleasure; 
 and they do the work of the stage, the pul- 
 pit, the philosopher, and the poet; yet, there 
 is far too much that is deciduous about 
 stories, little that is perennial, and a moun- 
 tain with qualities that can never entitle 
 them to rank as literature. We don't realize 
 the greatness and the variety and the possi- 
 bility of human-nature because our lens of 
 human-nature interests is too contracted; 
 great fiction broadens this lens perhaps more 
 than all other things. Nobody can tell a story 
 so well as the best of the story-tellers; with 
 the Scotts and the Feni more-Coopers as our 
 story-tellers, we are on safe ground. Ideal 
 history is a mixture of poetry and philoso-
 
 l8 BlBLIOPHILY, OR BoOKLOVE 
 
 phy; it is the divine Book of Revelation, 
 and great men are its texts; it is mainly the 
 biography of a few imperial men of the 
 world's real aristocrats upon whom the 
 destiny of humanity always hangs and with 
 whom all improvement begins. In the evo- 
 lution of a patriotic American, history-influ- 
 ences are an essential : the better We Ameri- 
 cans know history and sociology, the better 
 we shall understand and appreciate The 
 United States which has been called The 
 Flower-of-The-Ages. A great man's biogra- 
 phy has greater educational and inspira- 
 tional value than the best story that has ever 
 been written, or the best sermon that has 
 ever been preached ; and whoever intends to 
 make the most of himself must know inti- 
 mately the lives of a few great men, whether 
 through history or biography, for there is 
 no greater incentive to worthy living. Bi- 
 ography tells what has been done, what can 
 be done, what ought to be done. Somebody 
 says that autobiographies have been writ-
 
 BOOKS 19 
 
 ten mainly by men who were more inter- 
 esting to themselves than to other people; 
 but Benvenuto Cellini, Benjamin Franklin, 
 and John Woolman have left us classics in 
 their autobiographies. Horace Greeley said 
 that in all Franklin's achievements he de- 
 served most and best from mankind for his 
 "Autobiography"; Charles Lamb said that 
 Woolman's "Journal" should be learned 
 by heart.
 
 Ill 
 
 GREAT BOOKS 
 
 IT has been said that modern writing is largely 
 a clamorous and turbulent stream dashing 
 among the rocks of criticism, over the peb- 
 bles of the world's daily events, trying to 
 make itself seen and heard amid the hoarse 
 cries of politics and the rumbling wheels of 
 traffic : a classic is a still lakelet, a mountain 
 tarn fed by springs that never fail ; its surface 
 is never ruffled by storm, and it is always 
 smiling a welcome to the visitor. 
 
 The Great Books make up the thing that 
 the schools call Literature. The Great Books 
 have been forged at the heart and fashioned 
 by the head of Godlike men; they are the 
 children of those whose life was a glorious 
 service, and whose memory is a benediction; 
 they are the embodiment of lives which were 
 devoted to the meditation of truth and to the 
 pursuit of beauty; they are the criticisms
 
 GREAT BOOKS 21 
 
 of life made by those who were in love with 
 life, and who had the deepest convictions 
 about the possibilities of life. The Great 
 Books are treasuries of golden thought in 
 golden words, the storehouses of the world's 
 spiritual riches, the worthiest and the most 
 wonderful of all the things that have been 
 made by men ; they are caskets that contain 
 the attar of head and heart, and of every- 
 thing that is most enriching and ennobling; 
 they are windows that discover boundless 
 fields for soul-refreshment and for soul-ex- 
 pansion, and the looms which rapidly weave 
 men's inner garments; they are hives of great 
 and inspiring thought and true love, foun- 
 tains of ideas and ideals, homes of all truth 
 and beauty and love and light and power 
 and freedom; they are the repositories of 
 universal experience, the wisest advisers and 
 the truest friends, perennial inspirers with- 
 out whose light the world should still be 
 in darkness. 
 
 What can these Great Books called liter-
 
 22 BlBLIOPHILY, OR BoOKLOVE 
 
 ature do for us*? It is their mission to form 
 the intellect and strengthen the soul-powers : 
 De Quincey calls the former knowledge-\\\.- 
 erature, and the latter /ww^r-literature. The 
 Great Books have always come from the 
 heart : their authors have written them be- 
 cause they could not help it: little men so 
 often write just to say something; big men 
 never write until they have something to 
 say: the big men write what Thoreau calls 
 " The Eternities " ; the little men write what 
 he calls "The Times." A great book is al- 
 ways better to know than a great man, for it 
 is always the best part of some great man. 
 To know the great man is not always to have 
 an access of soul-power through knowing 
 him : Hawthorne says that it is not for the 
 best interests of the world to know too inti- 
 mately the lives of its great men; but to 
 know Great Books is to acquire soul-enrich- 
 ment from each intercourse with them, yet 
 to escape the compensatory weaknesses of 
 their authors' genius. The majority of us are
 
 GREAT BOOKS 23 
 
 from humble beginnings with an insuffi- 
 ciency of the breeding and the environment 
 and the education that contribute to the 
 amenities that entitle us to commingle with 
 the living great men and women ; hence, it 
 is only through the Great Books that almost 
 all of us can ever come to know great men 
 and share their influences and life can 
 never be complete without the influences of 
 the best society. Lowell says, "As thrills of 
 long-hushed tones live in the viol, so our 
 soul grows fine with keen vibrations from 
 the touch divine of noble natures gone." In 
 Great Books, great men talk to us, give us 
 most precious thought in most precious 
 language, and pour their souls into ours : by 
 their ideas, they bring us freedom; and 
 through their ideas, they bring us expansion: 
 the lightning of their great thoughts and 
 feelings shows us the way to heroic life, 
 which we never can find by any other means. 
 The Great Books are fatal to low standards, 
 to self-complacency, to narrowness and dis-
 
 24 BlBLIOPHILY, OR BOOKLOVE 
 
 honesty of every sort : they appeal to the 
 best that is in us, and answer our demand for 
 what is best : they give a voice to our own 
 indistinct thoughts and to the things we are 
 yearning for: through them we catch the 
 spirit of the holiest and the wisest men that 
 have ever walked this earth: they call forth 
 our deepest needs, inspire confidence in our- 
 selves, and impel us to nourish our soul with 
 truth and beauty and love : they reveal the 
 charm of a noble and heroic life : they kindle 
 a desire for the strength and the delights of 
 the good and the wise, and strengthen our 
 will to strive for goodness and wisdom. If 
 we will only put ourself in a receptive mood 
 toward this literature, the whole human race 
 will speak to us through Great Books. For 
 the purposes of correct culture, Great Books 
 surpass all the homes and the schools in the 
 world, for they have power to exalt beyond 
 all other powers known to man. There is 
 only one escape from being always a very 
 limited creature to know the best of the
 
 GREAT BOOKS 25 
 
 thoughts and the feelings of the supreme 
 souls of the world, through companton-friend- 
 ship with Great Books : it is only the men 
 who have a large acquaintance with them 
 and a deep abiding friendship for them that 
 are able manfully to deal with manlike and 
 Godlike things. We can never get broad 
 culture from a narrow circle : for this broad 
 culture, we must lay hold of the Great Books 
 with both hands ; and we shall find them in- 
 teresting and profitable wherever we shall 
 touch them. Without the depth and the 
 breadth and the genuineness which we get 
 in so large a measure from friendship with 
 the Great Books, a man's best work can in 
 these days never come out of him. Those 
 who browse among Great Books are seldom 
 the slaves of the gross passions, for the Great 
 Books set the intellectual atmosphere in 
 vibration and stir the heart. Through Great 
 Books, we get an ever-widening meaning 
 and beauty in life ; they are as essential in 
 the building a real man as lactation, denti-
 
 26 BlBLIOPHILY, OR BoOKLOVE 
 
 tion, and puberty. With the Great Books as 
 our companion-friends, we proceed through 
 life with an open and receptive soul, with 
 increasing hospitality for each new thought 
 and feeling, with an ever-firmer faith in God 
 and man, in conscience and in duty. "We 
 go to them first," says Ruskin, "for clear 
 sight; then we abide with them as friends 
 because of their just and mighty emotions." 
 And all these things is what Great Books, 
 or literature^ shall do for us when careful and 
 complete culture of head and heart have 
 made us capable of understanding their mar- 
 velous messages. "The Great Books grind 
 no corn for the body ; they weigh only as 
 thistle-down in the great ^j/'<?jj-scales of 
 life; but they lift the soul to higher realms, 
 and it is as important to keep the soul alive 
 as to keep the body it is j0#/-life that gives 
 all its value to body-\\fe" Cato's advice to 
 consort only with the best is especially good 
 advice as to book-associates: the common 
 books may afford enjoyment, if we are cheap
 
 GREAT BOOKS 27 
 
 enough to wish for anything so plebeian as 
 mere enjoyment; but it is only the books 
 called literature the Great Books that 
 can enrich our life: the books that inspire 
 and enforce are far more needful than those 
 that instruct and amuse a man's book- 
 company is an index of his soul. 
 
 But the Great Books are not for every- 
 body: there are only few who learn the high- 
 est use of books even after ///Hong study; 
 there are fewer men in college who are capa- 
 ble of qualifying in literature-courses, than 
 in anything else. The high things of life are 
 perceptible only by those who have climbed 
 to high places through the education of their 
 soul-powers more of us seem to be reach- 
 ing for the high sensualities than for the high 
 spiritualities! In these days of innumerable 
 schools and colleges, there are few who have 
 so educated head and heart that they are able 
 to grasp the import of even one Great Book. 
 The Great Books are only for souls that are 
 akin to the men whose thought and love
 
 28 BlBLIOPHILY, OR BoOKLOVE 
 
 have made them; they are sources of wisdom 
 only for those whom observation and expe- 
 rience and reflection and education have 
 made wise. Ruskin says that the Great Books 
 are the gateway to a great city of sleeping 
 kings who will wake for us and talk to us if 
 we only know the incantation of heart that 
 shall awake them. Without this beart-m- 
 cantation, we may open their marble en- 
 trance-gates, and wander among these old 
 kings in their repose, and finger the robes 
 they lie in, and stir the crowns upon their 
 heads; but they shall have no message for 
 us. Just to know the message of these great 
 kings and to be able to profit by their mes- 
 sage is worth more than all the labor of a 
 ///<ftime of j0/-education in preparation 
 more than all things else, Great Books, or 
 literature, inspires us for the highest possi- 
 bilities of head and heart and character; and 
 they are powerful spurs to heroic life: they 
 impel us to be and to become, to dare and 
 to do.
 
 IV 
 BOOK-GATHERING 
 
 THE company we keep among men is not 
 always an index of our character-equip- 
 ment, forthis is not always a matterof choice; 
 but a man's bookshelves are always an index 
 of what he is. There is no man who provides 
 for people, so valuable to the world as he 
 who makes a great book; and next to him 
 is the man who buys it for himself, and takes 
 it as a friend and companion of his leisure. 
 There is a dignity of culture which lives 
 only in the atmosphere of a library: it leaves 
 its mark upon the cultured, just as eating 
 and drinking and the other sensualities leave 
 their marks upon the voluptuary. The great- 
 est books are within the reach of all; "and 
 we may put Parnassian singing-birds within 
 our chambers, to cheer us with the sweet- 
 ness of their songs." As there are none more 
 enviable than the poor man who has gath-
 
 3O BlBLIOPHILY, OR BoOKLOVE 
 
 ered about him a few of the vital books, and 
 has lived with them until they have trans- 
 formed his soul so there is none so piti- 
 able as the poor rich man who lives barren 
 in some great bookless house. 
 
 A wise man's treasures are cased in leather 
 covers, not locked in iron coffers. A book 
 contains food inexhaustible; it is a provi- 
 sion for life, and for the best of life: there- 
 fore it is a duty to own them. " We call our- 
 selves a rich nation," says Ruskin ; " yet we 
 are filthy enough to handle each other's 
 books out of circulating-libraries ! " Many 
 a thoughtful man has maintained that the 
 book which is not worth buying is not worth 
 reading. As society refines, books become 
 more necessary, and the taller they grow in 
 the esteem of manly men. Next to acquir- 
 ing friends-that-tfr<?-friends, the best acqui- 
 sition is books-that-<zn?-books; indeed, no 
 human friendship can ever surpass that of 
 book-friends in our library, through which 
 our head and heart and character and abil-
 
 BOOK-GATHERING 31 
 
 ity to serve the higher needs of others have 
 been lifted to loftier levels : books as well as 
 friendship mean enrichment of life, or they 
 mean nothing every real man's life is 
 spent in the search for worthy books to live 
 with, as well as in the search for friendship. 
 Were the home-libraries of America emp- 
 tied of all but choice books, there should be 
 an intellectual and an emotional awaking 
 throughout the length and the breadth of 
 the nation. 
 
 The dining-room and the library are the 
 two most essential rooms in every home: 
 the one provides work-stuff for the body; 
 the other provides work-stuff for the soul. 
 For right health and growth, the library is 
 as indispensable as the dining-room per- 
 haps we all should be healthier and happier 
 and longer-lived for less dining-room and 
 more library : there 's many a fat paunch with 
 a lean head and heart and character and serv- 
 ice for others. We seem sedulous about 
 digging our grave with our teeth, instead of
 
 2 BlBLIOPHILY, OR BoOKLOVE 
 
 building ever more stately mansions for the 
 soul through wholesome thought and feel- 
 ing. A house is a borne only when its library 
 is as regularly and as eagerly frequented as 
 its dining-room; and the quality of the home 
 is to be measured by the quality of the food- 
 service of the library. Dr. Holmes assures 
 us that quality-<?tf// is an essential element 
 in the evolution of a gentleman; and all 
 the world of thoughtful men assure us that 
 quality library-food is equally essential. A 
 library is the very soul of a home : a house 
 without it is just a bouse, never a home. Ev- 
 ery well-ordered, cultured household num- 
 bers some of the kingly dead within its 
 family, who are on intimate friendly terms 
 with the living members of the household; 
 and there might be fewer gloomy dyspep- 
 tics as well as more leisure for physicians if 
 some of the oi^r-time spent in the dining- 
 room were given over to these kingly dead 
 and to their influences. 
 
 A library is a perennial fountain of re-
 
 BOOK-GATHERING 33 
 
 freshment and instruction and wisdom; it 
 is a sober chamber where true men take 
 counsel of the good and the heroic and the 
 wise that have passed on before them. A 
 library may not be an essential for salvation, 
 although there are men galore who believe 
 that in these days a/a// life is impossible 
 without access to bookshelves; it may not 
 be essential for what the world calls business- 
 success, which much too often means sim- 
 ply getting money together by-hook-or-by- 
 crook; but a library is essential for bringing 
 forth the best of American manhood, and 
 this is the manhood about which Americans 
 are primarily concerned without library- 
 influences, we Americans shall go stoop- 
 shouldered and limping through life, and 
 help to frustrate the destiny of our nation. 
 To be & patriotic American is no child's-play ; 
 it is an ^i^ryday task and a lifelong task to 
 bring forth the best of our individuality. To 
 evolve one's self into a creditable Ameri- 
 can manhood demands that we keep daily
 
 34 BlBLIOPHILY, OR BoOKLOVE 
 
 pumping fresh emotions into ourself ; and 
 whoever is intimately associated with the 
 best and the wisest that live in books is the 
 man who is likeliest to do this pumping: 
 few of us ever get the best out of ourselves 
 without high-class company. 
 
 Time graduates a man from school and 
 college, but never from his library it is the 
 workshop of a gentleman as well as the work- 
 shop of a scholar ; the gentleman that is made 
 without library-influences is flimsy stuf 
 and does not wear well. There is always a 
 dignity of culture and an elegance which 
 grows up only i n the soil and atmosphere of a 
 library and how little the din of the stupid 
 world ever enters the soul and disturbs the 
 quietude of him who feeds upon the dain- 
 ties that are served in a library! We make 
 far too little of books in this busy world of 
 ours, except for j0z>-purposes; we lose our 
 poise in business and politics, and too often 
 prefer the muddy stream of idle gossip of 
 newspapers and magazines rather than the
 
 BOOK-GATHERING 35 
 
 converse of the best and greatest discoverers 
 and creators! Unless we become broad and 
 deep enough to discover the value of books, 
 we must remain forever inferior, and shall 
 never attain insight into the truth and beauty 
 of life it is book-lack that does so much 
 to make manikins of what was intended for 
 man-stuff. The man with a soul is always at 
 home in a library; but coarser heads and 
 hearts demand material things to set them 
 in motion not books: "the true man is 
 in Paradise among his books; the swine- 
 herd is happier among his pigs." A soul 
 sinks or rises to the level of its book-envi- 
 ronment and book-society. To a true man, 
 a house without books is as dark and dreary 
 as a house without windows; if we knew our 
 truest needs, we should prefer to be carpet- 
 less than bookless the books that the 
 bookless man scorns are the reverberators 
 and the reflectors and the telescopes of 
 soul-life, and they have no substitutes; it 
 is only the man who has never owned and
 
 36 BlBLIOPHILY, OR BoOKLOVE 
 
 never used a library that sneers at books 
 and booklovers. 
 
 Right-living demands spiritual as well as 
 physical exercise: if we took more of the 
 spiritual, perhaps we should not require so 
 much of the physical. The man who is 
 buried all daylong in work which exercises 
 his body to the full does not think about his 
 head-and-heart exercise after his day's work 
 is done, and wears himself out in trivialities 
 and dissipations which make even a greater 
 draft upon his energies than his work. A li- 
 brary is especially needful for the working- 
 man: it shall be the good angel that shall 
 hallow his home not only a source of con- 
 solation to him, but a source of power and 
 happiness: it shall lift him from the drudg- 
 ery of the day, and take him away from base 
 company; it shall give him the close com- 
 panionship of good and ^<?-thinking men; 
 while his body is getting its needed rest, his 
 soul shall be working and growing. For 
 a few cents, the workingman can have as
 
 BOOK-GATHERING 37 
 
 nightly companions the greatest of the phi- 
 losophers and poets, of the scientists and 
 story-tellers. To allow the library its share 
 of the outfit of a household and also its por- 
 tion of the yearly expenses is a duty agrave 
 duty. There is an enrichment which comes 
 even from living where there are books, 
 and it is more to human purposes to haunt 
 the bookshop than the furniture-shop. The 
 plainest row that paper or cloth ever cov- 
 ered shows nobler spirit than the most elab- 
 orately-carved furniture or the most exquis- 
 ite go-carts, whether equipage or automobile 
 or airplane. In any household, the presence 
 of books is elevating, and their absence con- 
 tributes to the vulgarity of its inmates. As 
 our views of life become clearer, we perceive 
 how much a library helps us to get farther 
 from animal appetites, and closer to the di- 
 vine that lives within us. Books are not fur- 
 niture, but nothing else so beautifies a home. 
 Nothing can ever be so homeless as a book- 
 less house, except the house whose books
 
 38 BlBLIOPHILY, OR BOOKLOVE 
 
 show vulgar conceptions of life: a collec- 
 tion of ephemeral books is as far away from 
 a library as a collection of time-tables and 
 telephone directories. We should so collect 
 our library, that we shall never find any 
 guest within our walls who shall be com- 
 parable to the guests that sit upon our book- 
 shelves. 
 
 Like riches and learning, the value of a 
 man's book-gathering depends chiefly upon 
 what he does with his books. There are 
 times when we need books just for soul-r^- 
 freshment; but we must never lose sight of 
 their chief use, which is for soul-growth and 
 soul-enrichment. What we especially require 
 in books is neither quantity nor fine bindery 
 nor rarities nor ^rj/-editions, but the best 
 that has ever been thought and known by 
 man, and all this thought and knowledge 
 expressed in rarest style: it is only books 
 of this sort that contribute to spiritual-growth 
 it is only when each stone is a gem that 
 increase in number is increase in beauty. Dil-
 
 BOOK-GATHERING 39 
 
 ettantism is almost as much out of place in 
 a library-builder as the extemporizing-fac- 
 ulty is out of place in the pulpit. 
 
 A mere collection of books is not a library 
 a bookshop is a collection of books. A 
 library is an organism that develops with the 
 soul of its owner; it is furnished progressively 
 as his spiritual-life progresses. He has the 
 wisest and the best as his library-company, 
 and he keeps on good terms with them: 
 they aid and direct him, they counsel and 
 console. He is not fastidious as to the rai- 
 ment of his books, whether they are clad in 
 paper or in cloth, in Morocco or in Russia; 
 he is not especially concerned whether they 
 are /rj/-editions or /^/-editions, whether 
 some distinguished man owned them before 
 he got them, whether they carry some fa- 
 mous autograph or book-plate: the amen- 
 ities of bis book-gathering spring from his 
 having onlyjthose books with windows open 
 on all sides to the endlessness of human life 
 and human history. There are men who are
 
 4O BlBLIOPHILY, OR BoOKLOVE 
 
 book-buyers, and cultured gentlemen who 
 buy books; and they differ widely : the qual- 
 ity of a library depends upon who fills the 
 shelves like every other kind of gather- 
 ing-occupation, book-gathering may decline 
 from a j<?/-occupation to a mere sensuality. 
 A real man's library is not made, it grows; 
 he does not measure or number his books, 
 he weighs them : he gains them as he gains 
 his friends- one-by-one. The books he 
 gathers are not always those the professional 
 book-gatherer seeks, not always those the 
 wise or the would-be-thought-wise com- 
 mend; but those that supply the peculiar 
 hungers and thirsts of his own soul. His li- 
 brary is conspicuous for quality rather than 
 for quantity: his book-gathering he consid- 
 ers as a strictly personal matter; and he has, 
 perhaps, a repugnance to being famed for 
 his booksorhis book-plates. It requires only 
 a few shelves to contain all the books that 
 have done the most to enrich the souls of 
 men. It does not signify culture or literary
 
 BOOK-GATHERING 41 
 
 taste to have many well-laden bookshelves: 
 the parvenu often has these, all richly ar- 
 rayed in rare bindings; but he has them 
 mainly for vulgar display. A small library 
 yearly growing larger with worth-while 
 books is an honorable part of any one's be- 
 longings. A large library oftener distracts 
 than refines or delights; a scanty library is 
 always an advantage if it helps a man to 
 nobler thoughts and feelings, which ought 
 to be the only motive for an honest man's 
 reading: when life is so fleeting, it is wicked 
 to devote one's self to pastime, or to getting 
 a reputation as a mere reader, or to some 
 hobby in relation to books. 
 
 A man's enjoyment of his library shall be 
 proportionate to the extent to which it is his 
 own creation. The truest owner of a library 
 is he who has bought each book for the sheer 
 love he bears it. The safest creator of a library 
 is he who has a taste for books ; yet, as Low- 
 ell says, the man is not to be sneered at who 
 buys books without knowing what they are
 
 42 BlBLIOPHILY, OR BoOKLOVE 
 
 about, for he has made a start in the right 
 direction and is likely ultimately to become 
 a booklover as well as a book-buyer we 
 need not care what motive urges the begin- 
 ning of book-gathering so long as there ij a 
 beginning; it is a far more commendable 
 way to spend money, than to spend it in va- 
 rious gauds and sensualities: the reading of 
 even the backs of the books in a library is a 
 discipline in the right direction; and buying 
 more books than one can read is only the 
 soul's reaching out for better and bigger 
 things, and it is just this reaching that helps 
 to raise us above the beasts. 
 
 The bibliomane indiscriminately buys 
 books; the bibliotaph keeps his books under 
 lock-and-key ; the bibliophile loves books, 
 and is the only man who gathers books and 
 forms a library through sheer love. There 
 are few bibliophiles at the start, but many 
 a bibliomane has become a bibliophile at 
 the finish. Although there is nothing else 
 that so beautifully furnishes a house, books
 
 BOOK-GATHERING 43 
 
 are for use; so, we should have no books so 
 fine that we cannot use them. It is prudent 
 to have minor books of the library in cheap 
 covers, but to have all the permanent books 
 well-printed and well-bound. Bindings 
 should be cheerful, but plain: gilt grows 
 tawdry. To a booklover, slovenly binding 
 is as offensive as slovenly writing; and to 
 write in a slovenly way is an insult to the 
 reader, and perhaps an injury to him. Have 
 only useful things that are beautiful was 
 Robert Morris's rule in house-furnishing: 
 and this may not be far astray in library-fur- 
 nishing. "A book-plate gives a book a sta- 
 tus which it could not otherwise have had ; 
 whenever we see a book with the owner's 
 book-plate, we treat it with especial con- 
 sideration, for it carries its owner's certifi- 
 cate." Above all others, we must have the 
 poets upon our bookshelves; they are al- 
 ways the king-guests in a library: book- 
 shelves without a poet resemble a garden 
 without a flower; and our attending schools
 
 44 BlBLIOPHILY, OR BoOKLOVE 
 
 shall have brought us little for life-service, 
 if it has not equipped head and heart to un- 
 derstand the poets' messages, and the will to 
 get all the poetry out of life that it is brim- 
 ful of. 
 
 Of all the opportunities now offered 
 Young America, the most precious is the 
 opportunity to buy books; and, in these 
 days of schools and colleges, it is a marvel 
 that any young American should have a dis- 
 relish for books or neglect to cultivate a taste 
 for them. A few cents' outlay can get almost 
 any one of the vital books, and children 
 should be encouraged to gather them : Low- 
 ell says, "When the volumes are his own, 
 a youth may mark the passages that most 
 impress him, and live with them until he 
 prizes them as he does the familiar things 
 which he associates with noble thoughts and 
 gentle emotions. If a boy makes himself 
 master of one vital book, he shall never be- 
 come a commonplace man, for the virtue of 
 a higher life shall have been infused into his
 
 BOOK-GATHERING 45 
 
 own life through this one vital book of which 
 he has become master." It is a duty to help 
 children to know how to use a library : they 
 shall soon love the books as friends, and rude 
 company shall disgust them. A library is one 
 of the most precious things man has ever 
 designed, and wisely gathering a library is 
 second only to making a book that shall be 
 fit reading for the good and the wise li- 
 brary-makers are the authorets of the world, 
 and stand second in honor to authors.
 
 V 
 BOOK-READING 
 
 IT is within our power to know and to love 
 the best that has ever been written, and thus 
 to become a means to enlarge the views and 
 lift the aims of others and this is Godlike 
 work. We put our bands to work that we 
 may live; we put bead and heart to work 
 mainly that life may be worthy: we cease 
 to be believers and lovers and become only 
 partial men whenever we become engrossed 
 in the work of our hands, or in merely get- 
 ting a living, or in piling up material things 
 for the numberless sensual enjoyments. It is 
 chiefly through reading that the majority of 
 us can ever have that intercourse with supe- 
 rior men, which is the supreme essential for 
 soul-growth all ^velopment implies en- 
 velopment. Refinement as well as scholar- 
 ship comes from strong-book mindedness, 
 as Wordsworth calls it. Right-reading is a
 
 BOOK-READING 47 
 
 preparation for some worthy ///"^-activity, 
 and only that reading helps which puts us 
 in a working-mood. The longest life of the 
 greatest industry shall not cover even a hun- 
 dredth part of the great books of instruction 
 and inspiration, and it is inexcusable slaugh- 
 ter of time to accustom one's self to read infe- 
 rior books: to be unable to read is not nearly 
 so shameful or so dreadful as to readonly infe- 
 rior books reading must be a jo#/-exercise, 
 rarely a relaxation. 
 
 Every expanding mind finds that he gets 
 more inspiration from his reading, than he 
 gets from his most cultured friend. Who- 
 ever reads rightly may not become saint or 
 sage or hero, but he shall never become ig- 
 noble. The wise and the good of every nation 
 have heaped up treasures for him ; he is an 
 inheritor of everything that has been discov- 
 ered by labor or created by genius, and his 
 reading lets him into the soul of these labor- 
 ers and creators and opens to him both the 
 secrets and the treasures of his own soul.
 
 48 BlBLIOPHILY, OR BoOKLOVE 
 
 Persistent devotion to the ideals we get from 
 books brings increased power to think and 
 to serve, to believe in the goodness and the 
 greatness of life, and to have an ever-increas- 
 ing interest and delight in life. Ability to 
 read rightly admits us to the whole world of 
 thought and imagination, to the company of 
 saint and hero and poet; it gives us an inti- 
 mate acquaintance with the wisest and the 
 wittiest at their wisest and wittiest moments; 
 it broadens vision and deepens self-knowl- 
 edge, and makes us yearn for self-improve- 
 ment and the development of our individ- 
 uality; it dignifies the everyday-details of 
 life, turns home into a perennial refuge and 
 solace, and compensates us for having to 
 live so much amid the commonplace with 
 which our daily life is surrounded. The no- 
 ble are moved only by what ministers to 
 soul-growtb and soul-power; it is only silli- 
 ness and shows and other sensualities that 
 can captivate the ignoble. To the thoughtful 
 man, reading is only a means, never an end;
 
 BOOK-READING 49 
 
 how many books he reads does not concern 
 him, but what and bow he reads. Whoever 
 is seeking for truth and beauty and happi- 
 ness and knowledge and wisdom must make 
 himself a reader-of-books. It is the habitual 
 narrowness of the bookless man that pre- 
 vents him from realizing that books are in- 
 tended for our illumination and soul-guid- 
 ance and delight: whatever else he may be, 
 the man without the culture which comes 
 from wise and intimate intercourse with 
 books is narrow and unintelligent. 
 
 Right-reading is j-0#/-traveling through 
 regions more varied and attractive and 
 bealtb-giv'mg than all that can be had from 
 a lifetime of wor/^-wandering. Of all the 
 occupations that are known to man, there is 
 none so dignified as r/g"/-reading and none 
 so wasteful as wrowg-reading: when every- 
 thing else fails, we can trust the service and 
 the companionship of books; better than 
 any living society, they help us to know and 
 to cherish the divine germ that lives in each
 
 5O BlBLIOPHILY, OR BoOKLOVE 
 
 of us, and to produce the Godlike both 
 within and without ourself. The r//-read- 
 ing habit brings high thought, tender heart, 
 and an ever-enlarging acquaintance with 
 human-nature; it transforms into repose and 
 delight those many weary hours that thrust 
 themselves into each one's life; it gives cath- 
 olicity, spiritual strength, and moral muscle. 
 There is no other means of pleasure and 
 profit that costs so little and lasts so long : 
 when real books have become our teachers 
 and companions, we walk through life with 
 wide-open eyes and a receptive soul; and, 
 better than any other teachers and compan- 
 ions, they help us to purer and higher tastes 
 in nature, art, literature, and conduct. The 
 man of purpose carries away from each 
 reading either something to rouse his fancies 
 in a leisure hour, or something to gird him 
 in adversity. Centuries ago St. Basil said 
 that, in the combat which men must sustain, 
 they must be fortified by history and philos- 
 ophy and poetry.
 
 BOOK-READING 51 
 
 A man should read to live, not live to 
 read: there is a gulf between book-inquiry 
 and book-curiosity. Reading must give the 
 soul its work-stuff, must give additional life 
 and nourishment, must enable us to sound 
 the depths of our own self; else, it is main- 
 ly idleness. We are noble not because we 
 read many books, but because we apply them. 
 Much reading and little thinking weakens 
 the mind ; but little reading and much think- 
 ing brings light and power: it has been said 
 that he is wise who reads fifteen minutes 
 and thinks forty-five minutes about it. Low- 
 ell says that every book we read must be 
 made a round in the ever-lengthening lad- 
 der by which we climb to knowledge, and 
 to that soul-serenity and that soul-temperance 
 which is the richest and the sweetest fruit 
 of culture; but that these can be reached 
 only by reading the books that make us 
 think, and by reading them so that they 
 shall make us able to think. Large-reading 
 is as irrelevant as hrgt-eating: it is thought
 
 52 BlBLIOPHILY, OR BoOKLOVE 
 
 and digestion and assimilation that make 
 book s ser v iceable. The man who reads right- 
 ly never reads as a cold and blind bookworm 
 or with scientific-greed or pedant-pride or 
 critic-art; he reads to please himself and to 
 serve his soul. Reading never profits unless 
 it is a pleasure, for whatever is a labor to read 
 is never retained the first requirement is 
 to read what shall appease our desires or 
 satisfy our wants. Every book we read should 
 excel us in intellectual and moral strength, 
 and we should always prefer the books which 
 start ideas rather than those which put ideas 
 prefer those that give power rather than 
 those that give light and relaxation. A wise 
 reader shuns a badly-written book the 
 book- viands that are badly-served may be 
 as harmful as those that are badly-cooked: 
 if a thought is worth expressing, the writer 
 owes it to the reader to set it in fitting word 
 and phrase. To read only it?<?//-written books 
 is a marvelous aid in language-culture: an 
 awkward, careless, badly-written book is an
 
 BOOK-READING 53 
 
 insult and a hindrance to the reader; the 
 richer the thought, the richer the setting 
 should be. What we like to read is not near- 
 ly so important as what we ought to read: 
 whatever our reading tastes may be, we must 
 never forget that there is a best, and that the 
 best is always the most serviceable. 
 
 The reading-/?^// is acquired by reading 
 just what we want to read and just when we 
 want to read it harness may be good for 
 the maturer mind, but the fr ^-pasture is es- 
 sential for" the beginner: he should be turned 
 loose to browse at random, yet helped to ac- 
 custom himself always first to have a good 
 try at the best. It should be a principle of 
 every reader to use the kind of mind-food 
 that brings the right kind of mind-growth. 
 If a book is beyond our understanding, we 
 should drop it at once, and wait until our 
 spiritual strength shall enable us to carry it; 
 and we should be honest enough to say that 
 it is beyond us. The very best books, like 
 the very best people, cannot always please,
 
 54 BlBLIOPHILY, OR BoOKLOVE 
 
 for the soul is not always craving that sort 
 of food. Each must find for himself the book 
 he needs: there may be no message for him 
 in the book that the world calls great; let 
 him keep up his courage, continue to seek 
 and to read, and in time he shall find some 
 writer who 'shall fill his heart and open vi- 
 sions of new worlds to his wondering eyes 
 no two writers have the same message or 
 can ever make the same appeal. 
 
 Reading is not a business for a sou\-s/ug- 
 gard: it is a labor to which every faculty 
 must be awake and active. "To read true 
 books in a true spirit," says Thoreau, " is a 
 noble exercise, and one which shall task the 
 reader more than any exercise which the 
 customs of the day esteem: it requires a 
 training such as athletes underwent, and al- 
 most a lifelong steady attention to this ob- 
 ject." Right-rAfc//0 is as difficult to learn as 
 the art of right-Try//^ the great Goethe 
 said, " I have been fifty years learning how 
 to read, and have not yet succeeded." Be-
 
 BOOK-READING 55 
 
 fore we can read rightly, we must acquire 
 the habit of looking and seeing: Dr. Johnson 
 said that some men can see more while rid- 
 ing ten miles upon a stage-coach in Eng- 
 land, than others can see from traveling all 
 over Europe he who would bring back 
 the riches of The Indies must carry out the 
 riches of The Indies. We are told that some 
 readers are like jelly-bags; they let all pass 
 that is good, and retain only the impure and 
 the refuse: that some are like sponges; they 
 suck up all and give it back, only a little 
 dirtier: that some are like the sands of the 
 hour-glass; their reading runs in and out, 
 and leaves no trace behind it: that just a few 
 are like the workers in the Golconda Mines; 
 they retain the gold and the gems, and cast 
 aside the dirt and the dross. There are some 
 readers who enjoy without judgment, and 
 some who judge without enjoyment; but 
 the true reader enjoys while he judges, 
 and judges while he enjoys. Observation, 
 thought, and reading are three manhood-
 
 56 BlBLIOPHILY, OR BOOKLOVE 
 
 essentials: reading and thought without ob- 
 servation begets a bookworm ; reading and 
 observation without thought begets the in- 
 tellectual busybody; observation and the 
 thought it may awake without reading may 
 beget shre wdness,but it never begets breadth. 
 Every book that is read without a purpose 
 is an opportunity lost to read a book with 
 a purpose; and to skim a book as it is our 
 duty to skim a newspaper is to harm our 
 faculties permanently. As we cannot fath- 
 om the wealth of life there is in a true man 
 by occasional conversations with him, so we 
 never can appreciate the worth of a true book 
 just by reading it: we must study it, learn 
 to know it as we know a friend, and return 
 to it again-and-again with expectant and 
 joyous heart just as we return to those we 
 love right-reading comes perilously near 
 studying. "I love not those who skim dip- 
 pingly over the surface of a page as swal- 
 lows over a pool before rain: by such no 
 pearls are found; if there be no pearls, let
 
 BOOK-READING 57 
 
 us hope that an oyster or two may reward 
 adequate perseverance; if there be no pearls 
 or oysters, yet is patience itself a thing worth 
 diving for." Ruskin says that the court of 
 the kingly dead is open only to merit and 
 to labor, that no vile or vulgar person can 
 enter there; that, if we want to be the com- 
 panions of these kings, we must make our- 
 self kingly ; that if we long for the conversa- 
 tion of the wise, we must learn to understand 
 it and we shall hear it; that we must rise to 
 the level of their thoughts if we would be 
 gladdened by them, must share in their feel- 
 ings if we would recognize their presence. 
 In the realm of books to him that has shall 
 be given; and he who has not the power 
 through the culture of his spiritual-facul- 
 ties, though he may yearn to understand 
 Plato, shall quickly return to his newspaper. 
 We must read much, but' not many books: 
 the soul must not be a vessel, but a vat. To 
 get at the heart of books, we must live with 
 and in them. The real book is a strong
 
 58 BlBLIOPHILY, OR BoOKLOVE 
 
 tincture to be taken drop-by-drop, not 
 gulped down by the bottle. As the body 
 assumes only the j?<? essence of the food it 
 consumes, so a r/^/-reader takes and makes 
 his own only a very small part of what he 
 reads: the virtue of each book must sink 
 into the soul, and become a living and gener- 
 ative force. Both books and men talk better 
 to us when we talk back to them; and it is 
 better never to see a book, than to be warped 
 by it out of our orbit and become a sat- 
 ellite instead of a system. 
 
 Every reader must learn the art of judi- 
 cious skipping in these days, whole libra- 
 ries maybe skipped; even the worthy books 
 that we decide to read have large portions 
 which do not concern us in the least, and 
 shall be forgotten the day after we read 
 them: "as the fairest fruit-tree is chiefly 
 w00*/-bearing, breaking out here and there 
 into fragrant blossom and delicious fruit, so 
 even the very best books are mostly dull 
 matter, where at intervals heavenly truth
 
 BOOK-READING 59 
 
 kissed by the sun of genius buds and blos- 
 soms into perfect form." Lowell thought 
 that we should choose one great writer and 
 become thoroughly familiar with him; and 
 he reminds us that to understand perfectly 
 and weigh exactly one vital book, we shall 
 be gradually and pleasantly persuaded to 
 excursions and explorations that we little 
 dreamt of when we began, and shall find 
 ourself a scholar and an educated man be- 
 fore we are aware. One may browse in many 
 fields if his digestion and assimilation are 
 good; but the supreme books of life must 
 form the background of every life of thought 
 and study. 
 
 Wrong-reading To be open to every 
 book is to gain nothing from any book. The 
 book-hungry man crams himself with ma- 
 terials that do him no good: it is the lumber 
 put to use that is valuable; the insatiable 
 reader almost always reads with least profit. 
 Desultory reading is very mischievous: 
 it fosters habits of loose, disconnected
 
 6O BlBLIOPHILY, OR BoOKLOVE 
 
 thoughts; it makes a sewer of the intellect 
 through which any thoughts may flow; it 
 causes mind- wandering, which is the foe to 
 culture; it breeds inattention, which is a 
 faculty that needs most care. "Except as 
 conscious pastime," says Lowell, "desultory 
 reading hebetates the brain, and weakens 
 the bow-string of will; it communicates as 
 little intelligence as the messages that run 
 along the telegraph-wires do to birds perched 
 upon them." Hasty, omnivorous swallow- 
 ing of books causes soul-dyspepsia as sure- 
 ly as thoughtless gluttony ruins digestion. 
 Blackie says that desultory reading resem- 
 bles a little dog running about a lawn : he 
 sniffs at everything, but catches nothing. 
 The mere bookworm is the most useless of 
 useless men; book-dissipation and physical 
 drunkenness lead to debauchery. The head 
 that is a sieve through which every book- 
 decoction is drained retains only the refuse. 
 A man maybe a devourer of books, yet in- 
 capable of reading a hundred lines of the
 
 BOOK-READING 61 
 
 wisest and most beautiful. If you read ten 
 pages of a book with accuracy, says Ruskin, 
 you are forever in some measure an educated 
 man; and Thoreau says that a book should 
 be read as deliberately as it is written. Who 
 sips of many arts drinks none; still, we should 
 dread the man who reads only one book or 
 one kind of book, for he is sure to be one- 
 sided and unreasonable. 
 
 Reading for amusement is an occupation 
 for the most stagnant moments of life and for 
 the lazy-soul. Whoever reads for amusement 
 soon becomes averse to the continuous ap- 
 plication which is essential to get full benefit 
 from serious-reading and he soon becomes 
 averse to continuous application of any kind 
 he grows \xLy-bodied as well as lazy- 
 souled, and is utterly unfitted for any duty 
 which he assumes. Reading is not always a 
 commendable occupation: it may spring 
 from vanity or indolence or from a fondness 
 for what is frivolous and sensational; it may 
 also be a disease or the indulgence of mor-
 
 62 BlBLIOPHILY, OR BoOKLOVE 
 
 bid propensities, like that dreadful disease 
 of haunting moving-picture resorts, which 
 is so prevalent among the /////<?-souled peo- 
 ple. The effects of inferior reading are the 
 same as the effects from associating with su- 
 perficial and inferior people it wastes time, 
 enfeebles discernment, dulls intellectual 
 edge, prevents us from ever appreciating 
 any of the excellent things of life: few have 
 ever risen even to mediocrity whose time has 
 been devoted to inferior reading. 
 
 Newspapers and magazines are mainly idle 
 things for the idle hours of idle people ; to 
 read them properly is one of the supreme 
 acts of presence-of-mind. They are mainly 
 as soulless as the syndicates that publish 
 them, and the chances are ten-to-one that 
 they shall waste our time or mislead us, or 
 both. Newspapers purvey the news of the 
 entire world, and they are the only bridge 
 that so many millions will ever use over the 
 Gulf of Ignorance; yet, far too often they 
 are pickers of gossip and scandal, searching
 
 BOOK-READING 63 
 
 the gutters and the garbage-barrels of the 
 world for every unclean and tainted scrap 
 of mishap and misdoing. In every newspa- 
 per there is a bit that we should read; the art 
 is to find this bit, and to waste no time with 
 the rest. Ability to be pleased with the best 
 depends upon intimate acquaintance with 
 the best; hence, we must confine our read- 
 ing to the best, and read the newspapers 
 mainly by headlines those who handle filth 
 shall get dirty fingers. The magazines seem 
 to be the chosen reading of the throng, and 
 they leave them as they find them mainly 
 unintelligent and unfeeling; the knowledge 
 they give is fragmentary, and often untrue; 
 and they teach the throng just enough to 
 make them talkative about what they are 
 far from comprehending: what leaves us un- 
 moved leaves us unimproved. 
 
 The !tgbt-reading-hzbit\\ It is as fatal to 
 culture as the eating-habit is to health and 
 longevity. Heads that are fed upon it be- 
 come flabby, frivolous, and illogical. It ut-
 
 64 BlBLIOPHILY, OR BoOKLOVE 
 
 terly debilitates and corrupts the mind for 
 wholesome life as well as for wholesome 
 reading; it throws us into foolish or vicious 
 company, dissipates our spirits, sullies our 
 faith in God and man, makes our talk frothy 
 and puerile, and leaves us incapable ever of 
 associating with manly men or womanly 
 women. Those who are too weak in head 
 to bear the fatigue of thinking always resort 
 to newspapers, magazines, or flashy-fiction. 
 Anything like an honorable life is impossi- 
 ble for those addicted to reading for amuse- 
 ment or to //^/-reading, because such read- 
 ing makes their adherents incapable of 
 admiration and reverence and seriousness, 
 which are three virtues found in every wor- 
 thy man and woman. The head and heart 
 that have been relaxed by fiction that lacks 
 even intellectual fiber are in sad condition 
 to meet the perils and the requirements of 
 life. The religious story-books are hardly fit 
 reading for self-respecting Christians they 
 are generally feeble in thought, slovenly in
 
 BOOK-READING 65 
 
 style, goodish in sentiment, and untrue in 
 portrayinghuman-nature. Tokeepthecom- 
 pany of periodicals and light-fiction is to live 
 in the crowd; and in the crowd it is impos- 
 sible to retain self-respect, which is the very 
 foundation of virtue. It is only the intellec- 
 tual loafer and the moral paralytic that lolls 
 over the trash and the filth of cheap fiction: 
 newspapers and magazines have their im- 
 portant place in the world; but light-reading 
 has nothing for anybody but distraction, 
 dissipation, and debauchery. Debilitating 
 waste of head and heart in aimless, promis- 
 cuous, vapid reading in the poisonous ex- 
 halations of book-garbage this is misuse 
 of reading, the sin of it. So much of the shal- 
 low conceit and the opinionated infallibility 
 which prevails to-day is attributable quite 
 as much to inferior-reading as to the smat- 
 tering of the school-mills. Ruskin says that 
 when we have learned to read rightly, we 
 shall gradually attach less weight to our own 
 opinions, shall perceive that our thought
 
 66 BlBLIOPHILY, OR BOOKLOVE 
 
 upon any subject is not the clearest and wis- 
 est, and that what we think of a subject is of 
 small importance that we have no mate- 
 rial from which to build an opinion on any 
 serious subject at all : we shall soon become 
 convinced that on serious matters we have 
 no right to think only to try to learn 
 truths and facts. This lesson in humility from 
 r/f/-reading is one of its richest returns : 
 launch not beyond your depth, and mark 
 that place where your power and knowledge 
 leave off and your impotence and ignorance 
 begin. 
 
 The />#/;V-libraries!! When eighty per 
 cent of the books they distribute is inferior 
 fiction full of fribbles and oddities and 
 monstrosities, a public-library is anything 
 but a public-benefit! We need to be taught 
 how to use a library just as much as we need 
 to be taught correct business life or domes- 
 tic life: through lack of being taught what 
 book-food to use and how to use it, almost 
 all the public-library patrons have weak
 
 BOOK-READING 67 
 
 book- stomachs able to digest nothing 
 stronger than the insipid society-novel, and 
 nothing purer than the mud of newspapers 
 and magazines.
 
 VI 
 
 BOOK-MAKING 
 
 IF spiritual and moral life count for noth- 
 ing, then those who provide food and shelter 
 and pastime, clothing and commodities and 
 comforts are the most important men in the 
 world; if the greatest thing in the world is 
 the power to enlighten the souls and refine 
 the tastes of the people, then we owe almost 
 everything on this side of barbarism to book- 
 makers they are guides and inspirers, and 
 their life is a glorious service; in the regen- 
 eration of humanity, they count beyond all 
 others. " I for one shall never be persuaded," 
 says Lowell, "that Shakespeare left a less- 
 useful legacy than did Watt by his inven- 
 tion of steam-power: the tenants of the 
 imagination afford all the deepest and the 
 highest satisfactions in life. Nature shall 
 keep up the supply of what are called
 
 BOOK-MAKING 69 
 
 hard-beaded men without our help; but 
 there are other uses for heads quite as good 
 as those at the end of the world's battering- 
 rams." 
 
 A true writer looks upon his art as a re- 
 ligion, and he is rewarded only when he has 
 bettered his readers. He is strong-minded 
 and ngi>/-minded, with a soul that sets in 
 motion the soul of others; and he does wor- 
 thy work because he is thoroughly sincere to 
 himself. He writes simply and spontaneously 
 only about those things that he is fullest of 
 and best understands ; he holds it his business 
 to utter wholesome truth, not to seek readers 
 or renown or returns in money. His habit 
 of expression leads him to search for some- 
 thing to express; hence, his life is one of 
 intense and incessant labor; he is a ceaseless 
 thinker, and always solicitous to renew 
 his mind with fresh knowledge and new 
 thought ; he ransacks a thousand thought- 
 mines for their gold and gems like flower 
 and fruit, every real book is the result of
 
 7O BlBLIOPHILY, OR BoOKLOVE 
 
 culture, for nothing excellent is merely nat- 
 ural. Whatever be writes is produced by the 
 gentle heat of incubation, for it is only the 
 book that has had time enough to be prop- 
 erly hatched that has vitality enough to live 
 and to serve: the writer of the moment is 
 rarely the writer of the eternities; "he cack- 
 les oftener than he lays real eggs"- the 
 less weight a pen and a race-horse carry, the 
 faster they run. 
 
 The man who writes a book without a 
 message wastes his time and our time. It 
 is a writer's chief office to minister to soul- 
 wants: that writer is always the most help- 
 ful to mankind whose book is a rock to build 
 life upon. It is only from books written in 
 uttermost sincerity by men of love and sym- 
 pathy that we can get instruction and inspi- 
 ration and proper recreation, which are the 
 only justifiable ends for reading at all. The 
 base writer destroys both good taste and true 
 culture; and the enthusiastic writer with 
 little or no capacity is a dangerous man. It
 
 BOOK-MAKING 71 
 
 is dishonest for a writer to claim an audience 
 before he has something real to say and be- 
 fore he has put it into the best form that is 
 possible for him, for bad art in a writer is bad 
 morals he should drink deep in prepara- 
 tion, or let writing alone. It is not quantity 
 that is demanded to-day, but the best that 
 can be known and thought, and then ex- 
 pressed in richest form. For purposes of 
 culture, the ar fist-side of a writer is almost 
 as important as his thought; it is rich thought 
 in rich expression that does most to help on 
 spiritual-life to keep the company of men 
 and books that speak rich-cream English 
 rather than the skim-milk of the street is the 
 very best means for acquiring rich-cream 
 expression: every writer is under bonds to 
 readers. 
 
 Whoever writes to instruct and inspire 
 must not expect many readers, for the 
 greater number prefer gossip or amusement 
 to wisdom. Whoever writes to amuse the 
 masses shall have a myriad-audience, but
 
 72 BlBLIOPHILY, OR BoOKLOVE 
 
 he shall rarely rise above the mountebank. 
 To vulgarize humanity seems to be the mis- 
 sion of the low-bred writer: he is generally 
 unscrupulous and debasing. It is with books 
 as with life wherever we turn, we come 
 upon the incorrigible crowd swarming ev- 
 erywhere and damaging everything as flies 
 in summer. The talented writer who em- 
 ploys his powers in propagating immorality 
 and in seasoning vicious sentiments with his 
 wit and humor shall have his day-of-reckon- 
 ing. The best entertainment any writer can 
 give is that which lifts our imagination and 
 lightens our life-burdens, by taking us out 
 of humdrum and sordidness for a time, so 
 that we may see ideal, familiar life and see 
 it more truly from the 0r//j/-writer's view- 
 point. Almost all of us are encompassed by 
 sad and sordid conditions; and whoever 
 carries us far from these through his book 
 into what is best and beautiful in life, both 
 relaxes and refreshes us. Each day's experi- 
 ences give us glimpses of how ill and how
 
 BOOK-MAKING 73 
 
 vulgar men can be; and it is always refresh- 
 ing to know the romantic truth. 
 
 Nature has inflicted barrenness upon many 
 a mind which nevertheless has teemed with 
 productions. Writing books is not a trade, 
 but an art which demands peculiar powers 
 and patient practice. All the true writers are 
 doers, although they are people who seem 
 to have nothing to do: nothing seems so 
 fruitful in a writer as a fine gift for what com- 
 mon people call idleness. They say that the 
 muses are jealous mistresses, and never lend 
 their higher gifts to those who plunge very 
 deep into the tumult of the world both 
 gods and muses as well as wise men hate 
 those who do too much; and those who woo 
 the muses must keep the even tenor of their 
 way along the cool sequestered walks of life, 
 far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife. 
 Dr. Holmes closed his portfolio for twenty- 
 five years after his physician-life began, and 
 opened it only after his professional stand- 
 ing was established; and Hawthorne, our
 
 74 BlBLIOPHILY, OR BoOKLOVE 
 
 greatest romancer, was mute duringhis years 
 of work-life at Salem, Boston, and Liver- 
 pool. It is different with scholars: a forge is 
 not a convenient desk, yet Elihu Burritt 
 learned there many of his thirty languages 
 between the times when he was blowing his 
 bellows in the service of his farmer-neigh- 
 bors; the nursery is not the place one would 
 choose for astronomical calculations, yet, 
 beset by her children, whom she never neg- 
 lected, Mary Somerville wrought out her 
 "Mechanism of the Heavens," which put 
 her into the first rank of contemporary sci- 
 entists, and made her a member of The 
 Royal Astronomical Society. It was not for 
 nothing that Hawthorne, Charles Reade, 
 Tennyson, Stevenson, and scores of others 
 who have left their footprints spent years in 
 apprenticeship to their art. 
 
 Making books as a means of making 
 money has multiplied books for the sake 
 of the writers rather than for the readers: 
 whoever is thinking about the royalty of
 
 BOOK-MAKING 75 
 
 his books will watch his fame rather than 
 the welfare of his readers. Somebody says 
 that there is always a metallic taste about a 
 book written under the stimulus of so much 
 money for so many words. Butler says it is 
 a writer's duty to talk up to his auditors, not 
 down to them. The writer who sells his tal- 
 ents finds it hard not to sink to the level of 
 those whom he addresses. When writing 
 becomes a business, the very power of con- 
 templation becomes impaired and pervert- 
 ed: the true writer always writes first to 
 please himself and to relieve himself, then 
 to please and to elevate those who keep his 
 company. Writing is always better for be- 
 ing an appendage to some other work an 
 avocation rather than a vocation: Longfel- 
 low did not improve the quality of his work 
 by quitting his professorship at Harvard 
 and devoting himself exclusively to his art; 
 Bryant's fifty years of busy life "drudging 
 for the dregs of men," as he called it, did 
 not mar from first to last the quality of the
 
 76 BlBLIOPHILY, OR BoOKLOVE 
 
 art he manifested in "Thanatopsis," al- 
 though it did reduce his annual output to 
 seventy-five lines. 
 
 A good book need not necessarily be writ- 
 ten by a man-of-letters: some wonderful 
 books have been made by men who gave 
 no special attention to book-making. Vora- 
 cious students as well as habitual writers rare- 
 ly make a book with vitality enough to live 
 beyond its infancy, and great thinkers who 
 write are seldom as serviceable as thoughtful 
 men who write. Men-of-the-desk cannot 
 touch the hearts of the plain people it is 
 only the unbookish folk who write from pas- 
 sion that ever do this: it is just because Rous- 
 seau could never write except from passion 
 that he is the mightiest literary force of the 
 eighteenth century, although he had neither 
 great intellect nor great knowledge. The 
 world's great books never come from a book- 
 ish people almost all that they write is 
 born to die ; it is the nations that are wbook- 
 ish in habits that have made the great books
 
 BOOK-MAKING 77 
 
 Greece gave Homer, England gave 
 Shakespeare. The power to write great things 
 is rarely an heirloom: "David, Isaiah, Ho- 
 mer, yEschylus, Horace, Dante, [Tasso, Pe- 
 trarch, Boccaccio, Chaucer, Shakespeare, 
 Milton, Goethe, Schiller, Hugo, Beranger, 
 Scott, Burns, Shelley, Byron transmitted 
 not one spark of their genius to posterity." 
 Originality is the rarest of writer-qualities: 
 almost all writers are echoes. Originality 
 seems to be the art of "making what is not 
 new appear to be new" the art of pouring 
 out of one bottle into another. Holmes says 
 that writers are cannibals: they live upon 
 each others' works. The striking passages 
 of even the greatest writers are notable for 
 the sameness of thought and sentiment, and 
 the very finest passages of prose and poetry 
 are often only the embellished recollections 
 of other men's productions. "Genius always 
 kindles its own fire, but it often does this 
 from the electric-spark from some kindred 
 soul." Even the most original writers have
 
 78 BlBLIOPHILY, OR BoOKLOVE 
 
 acknowledged their obligations to the good 
 things that were hived in other men's books, 
 and they dipped without stint into their 
 dainty honeycombs. The greatest book- 
 making geniuses have been omnivorous 
 readers, and their memories were hoops of 
 steel that turned to good account all that 
 they could hook up : Montaigne helped him- 
 self to thoughts in every direction, and con- 
 fessed that he weighed his borrowings, but 
 did not number them; Shakespeare and 
 Goethe "milked other men's minds with- 
 out reluctance," and used whatever suited 
 their purposes wherever they found it, prob- 
 ably believing that a thought at last belongs 
 to the man who best expresses it. Through 
 their style, these borrowers gave blood and 
 color to their borrowings; but their borrow- 
 ingsalsogave an ever-charming complexion 
 to what they wrote. Most profit and pleas- 
 ure can be had from writers who make us 
 think most; we are indifferent whether the 
 silver and the gold they work in is newly-
 
 BOOK-MAKING 79 
 
 dug from the earth, or is melted up from 
 spoils. A fresh writer is generally worth 
 reading, even if both his thought and knowl- 
 edge are reflective. A writer need not lament 
 his lack of originality, but he should have a 
 horror of being dull. 
 
 A book may contain a hundred pages, 
 and be ninety-nine pages too long: "the 
 world has myriads of books wherefrom the 
 longest- winded diver shall bring up no 
 pearls, nothing but his handful of sand." It 
 is in books the chief of all perfections to be 
 concise, and artist-writers as rigorously re- 
 move all surplusage as sculptors remove all 
 superfluous marble : it is not " a Xerxes-army 
 of words buta compact Greek-ten-thousand 
 that marches down safe to posterity"; Dean 
 Swift says that, were all books reduced to 
 their quintessence, many a bulky author 
 should make his appearance in a penny-pa- 
 per. It is only the man who utters deepest 
 truth in fewest words that may hope to en- 
 dure. Shakespeare says that brevity is the
 
 80 BlBLIOPHILY, OR BoOKLOVE 
 
 soul of wit, and that an honest tale speeds 
 best beingplainly told. We may need a book 
 for relaxation, but not too much of it; we 
 may wish to know something about a sub- 
 ject, but not too much about it with all 
 Carlyle's keenness for the shortages of oth- 
 ers, he never perceived his own shortage in 
 taking a score of his books just to preach to 
 the world the gospel of silence!! The writer 
 who can pack a bookful in a sentence al- 
 ways does most towards helping his fellows 
 to a happy life, and poets live because they 
 learned this ennobling secret. To be concise 
 is to be as rare as a genuine poet: Bacon is 
 the only English master of concision, with 
 Emerson as a good second. Emerson is the 
 most stimulating of all the American writers 
 because he has so admirably expressed in 
 epigram so many excellent things; he is one 
 of the very few writers of any age that can 
 be read and re-read and always with an ac- 
 cession of light and power. Every genuine 
 thought can be lifted out of its setting, and
 
 BOOK-MAKING 81 
 
 shine with its own light; and the writers who 
 have looked upon their art as a religion have 
 striven to give their readers such thoughts. 
 In one of his Edinburgh Review articles, 
 Sydney Smith advises that men who write 
 books should remember that longevity has 
 been greatly diminished since The Deluge ; 
 that from seven or eight hundred years, be- 
 fore The Flood, life is now reduced to sev- 
 enty or eighty years; that any man who 
 writes without The Deluge before his eyes, 
 and handles a subject as if men could lounge 
 ten long years over apamphlet, commits one 
 of the most grievous wrongs against human- 
 ity. It may be far less dishonest to pick a 
 man's pocket than to rob him of his time. It 
 is the man who can tell it well and tell it so 
 that those who run may read that always 
 gets an audience that keeps awake ; his au- 
 dience is always glad to hear him, and they 
 frequently revert to him. 
 
 A man's character has nothing to do with 
 his writings: if we are searching for viceless
 
 82 BlBLIOPHILY, OR BoOKLOVE 
 
 writers, we shall die with hardly one of those 
 myriads of influences for good which come 
 from books. It is the good in men that must 
 be remembered; the sooner the perishable 
 husk in which it has been enveloped is suf- 
 fered to perish, the sooner we shall know 
 them as they really are. The world's best 
 and greatest men are often deluged with 
 what the good /////*- people abhor as the 
 gravest vices, for they are bom with stronger 
 passions than ^>/tf/-people, and are tried by 
 greater temptations. It is evidence of an 
 egregious blockhead to heed the coarseness 
 or sensuality or abjectness of the world's men 
 of greatest accomplishment the genius 
 may acknowledge no law; still, he is both 
 wonderful and sacred. The sensible man 
 judges a writer just by his writings, never 
 by his character. The world says that Rous- 
 seau was utterly abject, but he was a huge 
 influence for good ; it says that Byron was 
 a bad man, but he was a great poet; it says 
 that Bacon was venal, but he was a marvel-
 
 BOOK-MAKING 83 
 
 ous thinker. There was much said and done 
 at Mermaid Tavern which Puritans could 
 not approve ; but the world would be poorer 
 to-day had it not been for Shakespeare and 
 Jonson and their often sack-full boon-com- 
 panions. Excellent morality may be taught 
 by a man who has no morals at all, just as a 
 beautiful stream may arise in a very impure 
 fountain. Lowell asks what has the conduct 
 of Shakespeare and Goethe and Burns to do 
 with Genius. He says that genius is not a 
 matter of character that, like Aladdin's 
 Lamp, itmaybe sordid in the externals; but 
 we care nothing for this sordidness, if the 
 touch of it can build palaces and make us 
 rich as only those in Dreamland are rich. 
 
 THE END
 
 ($be ttibrrsibc prcstf 
 
 CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS 
 U . S . A
 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 A 000 101 722 7